


Mindgames

by adelphepothia



Category: Tegan and Sara (Band)
Genre: F/F, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 02:34:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9798749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adelphepothia/pseuds/adelphepothia
Summary: Tegan's feelings for her sister go a bit beyond the pale.





	

**_Tegan_**  
  
**Diary entry, 1/2/2016**  
  
I’m a total romantic, I swear on my life. The fantasies I indulge in- the dates I take women on- involve tender kisses on foreheads and cheeks, boxes of chocolates delivered to the office at 11:00am, bouquets of red roses left on doorsteps with sweet little poems etched into lined paper. I’ve even taken the effort to pick the perfect pen, in the perfect colour, just to translate the whispers of my heart and soul into tangible words- and if so much as one letter went askew in my lovesick stupor, I’d scrunch the paper up and write it all over again. Just for her. What can I say, I’m a perfectionist. I’m a poet. I’m a _songwriter_. And that brings me to my fucking bitch of a twin sister. _Sara?_ You’ll exclaim. _Sara Quin? No way. She’s an angel._ Wrong. Now, I’m not saying I’m heaven-sent either, not by a long shot. But Sara…she gets under my skin like no-one else, buries herself in all the parts of myself I hate so much, entangles herself inside my labyrinthine mind- coils around it, like a snake. Like a demon. And if she is, I’m a woman possessed.

**Diary entry, 2/2/2016**  
  
Perhaps comparing my own twin sister- who is, essentially, a mirror image of myself- to the devil is a bit extreme. No, I don’t hate her. Of course not. We write music together, we laugh together, we eat dinner together. She’s my best friend, if I’m being honest with you. I wouldn’t tell her that, of course. She just makes my blood boil, brimming over the edges of my pores. If Sara were here- not in corporeal form, but inside my head- she would tell me- _Tegan, you’re projecting_. I can hear those words echoing through my skull all the same. If she knew, she wouldn’t sugar coat it. She’d give it to me straight, just like she has a million times before. _Tegan, you’re too clingy. Tegan, you’re being annoying. Tegan, go away._ Sorry, not the point. I figure- if I make her sound as awful as possible, maybe you can blame this mess on her. I’ve always done that- blame my messes on her, make her look like the bad person when really, it’s me who’s fucked up. But no, not this time. No kind of out-of-context Sara-isms will justify this. See, there’s something I’ve neglected to mention. I’m in love with my twin sister. I want to kiss her, but not just on the cheek. I want _her_ to be the one I send chocolates to at 11am; the one I pick roses for; the one I spend eons writing poems for. But sometimes- just sometimes- I want to spread both of my thighs apart over her face, trap that serpentine head of hers between them, and just _shut her the fuck up_.  
  
Ah, so _that_ was the clincher! You’re reading the diary of Tegan Quin, self-professed pile of incestuous shit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some sort of predator or anything. I mean, give me some credit- we work to together for Christ’s sake. I’m not going to ruin years and years of progress just to drop that fucked up bombshell on anyone- least of all her. Accidents? Slip ups? They don’t happen to people like me. When God casts you aside, the Devil takes you under his wing. I’m beyond retribution, banished from heaven’s gates before I’ve had a chance to reach them. I’m incarcerated within my own personal hell, chained to my sins, my fears, my nightmares. I live with them; drag them with me wherever I go. I’m stuck in Satan’s playground- you really think he’s going to make it that easy? No, the point of my earthly imprisonment is to harbour my guilt. Stare her in the face and say nothing, do nothing. Not a touch too tender. Not a peek too long. I’m getting quite good at it, if I do say so myself. I can almost look her in the eyes without imagining them crinkling at the corners, shut tight in ecstasy. I can almost look her in the mouth without thinking about it between my legs, or open wide, shouting profanities that would turn my ears bright red. I wonder- is her tongue just as snakelike, just as slick and sinuous when she fucks? _Jesus Christ_. It feels dirty to have that name on my mind, let alone my mouth (when I’m moaning profanities of my own at night, every night). _Jesus Christ, Sara. Yes. Fuck me harder. Fuck me like you hate me. Fuck me like you love me._ That wicked temptress teases me out of my fucking mind, all the goddamn time. Drives me fucking wild- and not in the sappy _Heartthrob_ Track #5 way either. Pure, unadulterated, maddening lust laced with all-consuming, body-wracking anger.  And here I am, expected to keep everything under control, keep levelheaded. And then you start writing all your fucked up thoughts in some cheap book you bought at Target- as if your wonderful sister isn’t even worth more than the $10 you spent on it- and hope all this sends the feelings away. As if.  
  
-

I’ve decided to take a break from The Diary for a while. Reading over it about a week later made me feel nauseous. So sick, in fact, that I scrunched up the most recent pages I wrote and chucked them in the trash. Cried over it for a little while. I don’t feel like myself when I let myself fester in my feelings for Sara- it turns me into someone I’m not. I really do care for Sara, I love her- more than anyone. The ire, the lust- they are subsidiary emotions that simmer under the surface of my very saccharine love for her. If anything, I romanticize her, more than I probably should. Then again, I guess words like ‘ _should_ ’ mean nothing when you’re walking with a broken moral compass to begin with. I guess that’s what becomes of falling in love with your twin sister.  You’d think, after thirty-five years of living, I would have learned to deal with things a bit better. Anyway. We’re meeting up today to sort out merchandise for the new album, so I’m going to spend the next few hours trying to make myself as likeable and _normal_ as possible.  
  
We’re sitting on the couch, waiting for Jasper to arrive. Man, that guy is always late. I bet Sara five dollars he’d turn up twenty minutes from now, with a cup of coffee and an endearingly pathetic excuse. She bets me half an hour, Taco Bell and a sleep-in. We shake on it and I tried to convince myself, in a desperate litany, that I was shivering from the cold February air.  
  
Twenty-three minutes, a caramel macchiato and the bus was totally packed, dudes! He’s a goofball, but we love him. When Jasper goes upstairs to put his bags away, we both erupt into giggles.  
‘Hand over the good stuff, Sara!’ I extend my hand out to her and rub at nothing between my thumb and four fingers.  
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she says, unfolding her wallet with a light eye roll. ‘Geez, anyone would think you were barely meeting food and rent requirements, you desperado.’  
‘It’s a tough world, Sar’. You gotta take what you can get. Even if it does mean milking your sister for all she’s worth.’ I go to take the money from her, but she holds it behind her back, making me lean over her to retrieve it.  
‘Hey, I won that fair and square, sister! Gimme the dough.’ I make a big show of stretching my arms out for it whilst she titters like a schoolgirl. It’s times like this that I realize how _easy_ it is to love Sara. Despite biting back _I-love-you’_ s and excessive affection for fear of exposing myself, despite all the resentment, self-hatred and misdirected anger loving her brings to me, Sara- the real Sara, not Evil Diary Sara- is utterly lovable.  
‘I’ll have you know I’m worth a fair bit more than five dollars, Tegan,’ she says, acting fake-stern. ‘There are lots of people out there who would _beg_ to be in your position right now.’  
She’s smiling- with teeth even, which is an appreciated rarity. Challenging, sisterly. But her words make me realize exactly _what_ position she’s referring to, and I freeze up.  
I’m practically sitting on top of her now, our breasts- concealed under layers of thick winter sweaters, but still unmistakably _there_ \- just inches from each other. I’m so close, I can feel her hot breath against my neck.  
I manage to muster up an ‘ _Oh, I’m sure they would_ ,’ before snatching up the five bucks and shuffling off of her. I sit with my legs pressed together and hanging off the edge of the couch and I swear I can _feel_ her staring into the side of my head. If things continued in the same vein today, my underwear would be completely soaked within the first hour of her being here. So much for _normalcy_.  
  
‘’Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello, what’s goin’ on e’re then?’  
Thank God for Jasper. At least he wasn’t too late to save me from this sisterly faux-pas. He couples his awful British accent with a flamboyant toss of his scarf and it lands unceremoniously by the piano’s feet.  
“Not to be a nag or whatever, but that scarf needs to be picked up and placed somewhere suitable before I go completely crazy.”  
I chuckle at Sara’s obsessive-compulsive tendencies and she pokes me in the ribs playfully.  
  
Fucking hell, whoever said being in a band was an easy ride needs to be dragged out into the street and shot. My back aches from all the packing, stacking and folding. I’m beginning to hate my own merchandise and I haven’t even sold one shirt yet. I stretch my arms out and sigh. Boredom permeates the room in a sort of sluggish haze, and I’m not above turning to Sara to cure the stale atmosphere.  
'Hey Sara, have you heard _Sex With Me_?'  
Sara peers up from the t-shirt she was folding with a smirk, raising a thin eyebrow at me. 'I sincerely hope I didn't mistake ' _heard_ ' for ' _had_ '.'  
I’m sure I must have coloured at least two shades darker. That awful mixture of anger and lust stews in my gut, sending a rush of heat down to my core. I couldn’t tell which feeling asserted dominance right now- but then again, I never really could with Sara. A witty rejoinder of ‘Fuck you’ ended up passing my lips, sounding sufficiently inspired by both emotions all the same. She just laughed, then imitated surprise.  
'My, my, what propositions from one's sister! You sure are feeling kinky today, aren't you Tegan?'  
  
If it had been anyone else, the remark admittedly would have tickled my funny bone. But any humour I found in the situation projected itself in the form of a familiar nervous giggle. It was a sound one might make in the occasion of an acquaintance cracking an offensive joke- that horrible, high-pitched _hee-hee-hee_ of a laugh, one that screamed ‘ _get me out of this awkward hellhole, right the fuck now_.’ Incest. Something supposed to be so ludicrous, disgusting and above all- frankly- _hilarious_ stood in the shadow of my bottomless guilt, spun the joke into an exhibition of myself. _Push it down, spit it out, pray it away._ See, this is the exact type of situation that birthed Diary Sara. I’ve taken to calling her that now, because I realise that it was totally messed up of me to paint her as the bane of my existence and the devil at my door when really, she had no idea how she fucked with my brain. Sara likes to joke about incest. Twincest. She’s always got a filthy comment hidden up her sleeve, one that catches me unawares and pins me in place like a needle piercing through an insect. Still wriggling, squirming for dear life- in that moment, only aware of its shooting pain, doesn’t know that death is imminent within seconds. When she cracks these jokes, I feel like I’ve been placed under a microscope; like she’s analyzing me; a live test subject in a lab. One wrong move and I’m identified, categorized, trapped and ultimately, utterly _fucked_.

I really hoped Sara wouldn't notice how uncomfortable I sounded and, let's be real, probably _looked,_ because my face betrays me on the regular. I’ve always been told that I wear my emotions on my sleeve, like a tattoo. It takes me a few seconds to remember that I’m a functioning human being with a body and a stupid, self-inflicted situation to attend to, so I force out a response quickly.  
'No, I'm talking about Rihanna's song. From her new album. I thought it would be right up your alley, if you get my drift.' I focused all my efforts into waggling my eyebrows like a lunatic for comedic effect. It seems to work, because Sara giggles.  
“Rihanna _is_ a total babe. But I haven’t heard it yet, no. I’ll listen to it later.” She waggles her eyebrows back at me.  
‘What, like…a ‘ _light-some-candles-lets-take-this-to-the-bedroom’_ kind of ‘later’?’  
‘You know it,’ she winks, and I give her a _pffft_ noise and an eye roll in return. She then stands up to stretch her limbs- I guess she was getting sick of the mountainous pile of merchandise too- and I try not to stare at the swell of her breasts- now more pronounced as she thrusts her chest out like a peacock, arms raised tightly above her head.  
‘Anyways…’ she says, ‘Sex with me should be a memorable enough experience. You shouldn't have to ask if it happened or not.’ Then, just like that, she turns on her heel and waltzes into the kitchen.  
  
I feel like my entire face has caught alight. I’m tempted to soothe my scorching cheeks with my cold hands, rub away its telling crimson stain. I realize I’ve not only folded the t-shirt backwards, but also inside out. Mindlessly, I twist and turn the corners of the fabric between my thumbs and forefingers, trying my hardest to calm myself down. Pulling, pressing, caressing.  I stop abruptly when I notice I’ve created two creased little nubs on the chest of the shirt and I embarrassedly begin to smooth the material out again, images of my sister’s nipples flashing through my mind. It had always been this way with us. Sara held the power of language- of the spoken and written word; of a rich vocabulary; of the sharpest similes and metaphors. She was armed with a lexicon the size of a galaxy and she wasn’t afraid to wield her weaponry when I pushed her buttons. Me? Well. I’m more physical, more carnal. It’s not as if I’m not intelligent or even erudite- it’s just...my brain is very susceptible to emotions. If I’m angry, if I’m sad- my mind becomes consumed with that singular feeling, clouds over my senses, like ink blots in water. I can’t think fast, I can’t spit poison out like darts- no matter how much I want to. Sara can. She’s trained in the art- in fact, I’m certain she must have _created_ the profession. A couple of years ago we got into a bit of a drunken scuffle over album titles and she actually called me - and I quote- a “ _malignant, acrimonious cunt_ ”. While under the influence too! And all I could do was shove her, call her a bitch and scream into my pillow for a while. Not to mention Google what half of those words meant an hour later and delete my internet history, as if I’d been searching up some sort of weird fetish porn.  
  
The cheery trill of Sara’s ringtone rouses me from my thoughts with a jump that very nearly puts my neck out. It doesn’t chirrup for long- Sara quickly takes the call and I eavesdrop from the next room like a dirty fly on the wall. I’m too far away to hear the person on the other end of the line, but the familiar lilt in Sara’s voice makes my skin crawl; a knee-jerk reaction. Sweet, soft and excited all at once- she kind of sounds like a kid on Christmas Day, or a little yellow canary.  Though I can’t hear what she’s actually saying, her tone makes me tense up; I know exactly who she’s talking to. Fucking _Stacy_.  
  
 Look, don’t get me wrong. It’s not as if I haven’t had girlfriends before, or liked women other than Sara. I’d accepted defeat a long time ago; I had to move on with my own life. I couldn’t mope about waiting in the wings for Sara for the rest of eternity.  And despite her hovering on the edge of my consciousness, everyday, all the time- I’d even actively liked most of the girls Sara had dated, been friends with them even. Come to terms with the fact that they were the ones who fell asleep next to Sara at night, cooked her breakfast in the morning, kissed her, made love to her. Them, not me. It was easier to deal with when I thought they were just fucks or flings. But of course, let it be _The One_ that I hate with every fibre of my being. You know that one person in your life that everyone loves and you just don’t understand why? That one person that seems to get along with everyone except you- and of course, no-one else notices this, but you? That’s Stacy Reader. I’m starting to sound a bit psychotic about women now, I know. _Sara’s evil and so is her bitch girlfriend. Except me- not Tegan Rain Quin- I’m perfect_! It’s almost laughable. I’ll admit- the awful things I think about Sara are warped extensions of my deviance, perhaps even intermingled with a touch sisterly angst. With her, I recognize that it’s me who’s in the wrong. But with Stacy- I refuse to believe that it’s _just_ me. I tried to like her, for Sara’s sake, I really did- but there’s always that look in her eye, that edge of condescension, that wave of dominance that compels her to control and belittle Sara in the smallest but most insidious of ways. And I hate it. I hate her.  
  
Sara saunters back in the room to inform me of some _lovely_ , premeditated news.  
“Stacy’s just left the airport. She should be here in about an hour.”  
Oh, joy to the world. I force out a “ _That’s great!”_ and hope Sara can’t detect just how contrived my excitement is. Stacy, existing, was one thing. Stacy, staying the night in my apartment, sleeping with Sara, two rooms away, fucking each other’s faces off, was another.  
  
Stacy is being her usual bossy, audacious self and it makes me want to spit in her champagne.  
“Come on Sara, have another one! You’ve worked too hard on this bullshit. Here, take it.”  
_Bullshit_ , she says. You mean our career? She then proceeds to fill Sara’s glass up for about the, what, fifth time now? I’ve lost count. I can’t really say Sara was refusing the top-ups, but then again, she wasn’t really in much of a position to do so. I wondered absently if Stacy was so domineering because she was a total pillow princess when the lights went out. The thought makes me giggle against my will and I hoped to God I could just blame it on the alcohol. Nobody seems to be really paying that much attention to me anyway. I’ve probably had a few too many myself, to be honest. The second Stacy arrived, bottle of Merlot in one hand, suitcase in the other- I’d ceremoniously popped it open and poured everyone a glass. Now we’re all sitting on my floor, t-shirts, hoodies and posters all boxed up and pushed to the side, slowly letting the alcohol wash away our inhibitions.  
  
“Guys,” Stacy announces, arm wrapped around Sara’s shoulders possessively, “We should totally play Strip Poker.”

**Author's Note:**

> There are way more chapters than this, so I'm just testing the waters with the first one for now. 
> 
> Thank you to my beautiful girlfriend for the title! xoxo


End file.
